Turning
by perrywings
Summary: My warnings: Brotherhood, though pretty AU, and major deaths. Songfic based off/inspired by "Turning" from Les Mis. The might of the Amestrian army arrives too late for their young soldiers. All they can do is grieve. I own nothing.


**My warnings: Brotherhood, though pretty AU, and major deaths. Oneshot Songfic based off/inspired by "Turning" from Les Mis. The might of the Amestrian army arrives too late for their young soldiers. I own nothing. Review if you wan't, don't if you don't.**

It was the brink of war, but that wouldn't make this okay. Nothing would ever make this alright.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Not to Team Elric. Not when all of them were between the ages of 16 and 25. Damn the top men for calling all of their soldiers, even the underage and purely research State Alchemists, to fight this stupid war. Not the bright, beloved young people, kids really, who had such amazing futures that they were blinding with how great they were. After all, this was Team Elric. The unit lead by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric, who was still a brilliant soldier and theoretical State Alchemist even without his alchemy, and populated by Major Alphonse Elric, younger brother of Ed, trained in alkahestry as well as alchemy and dubbed the Armored Alchemist, Doctor and Captain Winry Rockbell, who had received medical training along with her constantly growing engineering skills, Major Russell Tringham the brilliant Red River Alchemist who could be deadly with his power, his younger brother Major Fletcher Tringham the Strong Roots Alchemist who brought balance to his older brother and helped Al keep the rest of the team at peace, First Lieutenant Paninya LeCoulte, a spirited girl and the best scout, and Second Lieutenant Rose Thomas, whose kindness led her to help anyone she could, even the enemy.

Mustang had assigned them what he had thought was the safest job. He thought he was protecting them. Team Elric should have had the quiet post. Sending Sergeant Major Kain Fuery and Sergeant Sheska Sciez with them had really just been to make sure hormones didn't get the best of them when they got bored. But the enemy must have found out the Amestrians' plans somehow. And they had paid heavily for it.

The bodies were still being gathered from where they had died. The enemy had been defeated, but it cost the lives of every Amestrian soldier there.

Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Jean Havoc, Heymans Breda, Vato Falman, Rebecca Catalina, Alex Louis Armstrong, Maria Ross and Denny Brosh stared in dismay, grief, anger and regret at the devastation.

"Did you see them going off to fight?" Catalina asked in a whisper. She was still newly assigned to Team Mustang, and she wasn't completely used to things, but she had seen the elder Elric grinning, teasing, joking, pretending to be offended that his team had such an easy job. But when they walked out, they looked as proud and tall and strong and glorious a group as Rebecca had ever seen. And now look at them. "Children of the barricade who didn't last the night," she softly replied to herself when no one answered, looking around at the destroyed street, the broken barricade they must have haphazardly put together with alchemy, furniture and anything else they could find. It hadn't been enough to hold back the enemy's troops.

Armstrong was sobbing. "Why? There were such good kids. Brave men and women all of them; how kind they were, and such honorable soldiers. Mrs. Pinako lost three grandchildren, not just one, and I will know she will ask me, 'did I see them lying where they died?'" Armstrong mourned and thought of the pains of telling Pinako Rockbell, who Armstrong had been by to see a few times as courtesy since he first met her.

Kain Fuery's body was the first to be recovered and brought out. His glasses were broken and his empty eyes stared through them at nothing. Falman just about howled in grief when he saw his young friend's body, and the rest of his team had tears for him too. He was such a wonderful, bright, intelligent young lad with a positive attitude and a powerful loyalty to his friends. The bombs and guns fighting Aerugo hadn't killed him, but a collapsing, falling wall had. Mustang kneeled next to Falman and gently reached under Fuery's glasses and closed his eyes. The rain was beginning to start. He was getting to feel useless.

Sheska's body was not far from Fuery's. A bomb must have been what took out the wall that killed Fuery, because she was covered in shrapnel and burns, her own glasses broken as well. Sheska had never been exactly attractive, but it was awful to see her body...mauled in this way. They were so close together, it was easy to imagine Fuery discovering bombs in the area or being used, and calling to Sheska because there is supposedly safety in numbers, and she was running towards him, when the explosion hit them. It would have been painful. Ross and Brosh, having known Sheska best, were distraught. As they laid her down next to Fuery, Brosh closed her eyes and pushed burnt hair out of her face, while Ross thought of Sheska's elderly mother in the hospice, Mrs. Sciez, and how she and Brosh would have to tell her. "Someone used to cradle them and kiss them when they cried."

Granted, one thing Team Elric lacked was alive parents. In fact, while some of them had guardians, they were pretty sure none of them, aside from Fuery and Sheska, actually had living parents. It was a bittersweet thought, the idea of having few letters of consolation to write and houses to visit.

The Tringham brothers were found next. Both had bullet holes in their heads, staining their blond hair red. At least these two had not suffered an agonizing death. Russell and Fletcher had absolutely no one to inform, the only person that needed to know of one brother's death was lying beside him, arms out and almost holding hands. The sight was another tear-worthy event that set off their waterworks. "'Did you see them lying side by side?'," Armstrong said, amending his previous impressions of Pinako's reactions, and observing for himself the beautiful tragedy of the brothers dying next to each other.

Four bodies had been recovered thus far and now lay in a line in the street, where the soldiers mourned them. There were still about half left to recover. Another soldier made the mistake of asking if they should get the medics. Catalina screamed, "WHO WILL WAKE THEM?" The city echoed, especially in the bitter, absolute silence of Mustang's team and the other soldiers, who were maintaining a respectful yet shocked and distraught silence. "No one ever will," Catalina asserted more quietly, gazing at the bodies.

Two more soldiers found the bodies of Rose Thomas and Paninya LeCoulte. The two were strange friends - Rose was a quiet, kind, 'good girl' who was mainly a doctor for Team Elric, while Paninya had been a loud and confident former thief that was one of the heaviest hitters on the team. But they shared common ground in grief and feeling weak, and had become good friends with each other as well as Winry, and the fact that there were rumors that each were involved with a Tringham brother may have helped. Now, they were both gone. Paninya had her automail legs broken and looked to be taken out by some kind of sword. Rose had a puncture wound in her stomach, but whether it was a bullet or blade, no one was truly sure. It would take the coroner to know. Mustang sadly thought that it would likely be Knox, and the grumpy, bitter, cynic doctor would not be pleased. No, he would hate this. Will hate this, he amended. And Mustang knew he was the only one to blame.

Breda looked down at the bodies of the two girls. Of Team Elric, they had definitely been the most naive and inexperienced. But they had grown. Now, they were wasted. Team Elric had always been idealistic. "No one ever told them that a summer day can kill," Breda said gravely.

The remaining three, the leaders of the group, took a while to find. These were the bodies everyone had been dreading to find. Everyone had loved Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, and Winry Rockbell. Many had said they were the next Maes, Roy and Riza. The three had been through so much and were the best of them, everyone knew it. No one wanted to see their bodies broken. Everyone knew they had to have put up a huge fight, and gone down fighting. When they finally did come upon the place they had died, it looked as it should, everything falling apart. Edward, Alphonse and Winry were on the top floor of a three story building, in a likely attempt to secure higher ground. The entire floor was torn apart, and the air was heavy with the remnants of alchemy. There were dead bodies all over the place, though the only ones that mattered were the three by the window. Some of the enemy appeared to be shot, or stabbed, or alchemically impaled. One had a wrench sticking out of his head. Ed, Al and Winry's bodies were by the broken window. They were all tangled together, suggesting how close they'd been standing, how they'd likely held hands, how at this point they had probably known there would be no way out for them and no chance of living, but still they had thrown themselves in front of one another to protect each other. It was a heart-aching thought. They were peppered with bullet holes. Guns, glass shards, broken metal, other kinds of broken materials likely from transmutations, and bullet casings from ones fired and ones shot at them surrounded them. It had been a massacre in here. Roy knew, somehow, that they had been the last to die. It was Mustang, Hawkeye and Armstrong that picked up the bodies of Ed, Al and Winry. They would not shirk their duties, let subordinate officers carry them. They owed the trio as much, and even more, they knew. They carried the too-light bodies and laid them down next to the rest of their group. Mustang wondered how they all had done it. The youngest soldiers were always the heaviest.

"They were schoolboys; never held a gun," Havoc said, staring at the young faces, feeling worn and tired and full of grief. They weren't supposed to die yet. They had long lives left to live, or should have anyway. Havoc's smoking was supposed to kill him before they ever thought seriously about keeling over. He couldn't even light a cigarette and smoke, his usual coping method, in front of them. Not with their bodies right there, not with something as serious as their deaths.

For Mustang, it was raining heavily now, even if in actuality no drops were falling. "Fighting for a new world that would rise up like the sun," Mustang said bitterly, wishing this was all just a horrible dream. He would do anything to wake up in his office and see Fullmetal scowling at him.

"Where's that new world now the fighting's done?" Hawkeye challenged him, tears in her eyes and spilling down her face, body shaking with her fists clenched so tightly her nails dug into her palms, drawing blood, and her knuckles turned white.

Mustang didn't have an answer for her, only a look that showed just how guilty he felt and how upset he was, and he pulled her into a hug, crying freely at all the injustices in the world. This was not Truth. This was not Equivalent Exchange.

Catalina walked over and pulled Hawkeye to her as the latter woman attempted to regain her composure. Mustang stood up and looked down at the bodies, all lined up in a row. Nine poor souls he had been too weak, too dumb, too _useless_ to save. Closing their eyes had been a polite gesture, but it made they look like they were sleeping. Almost, anyway. They looked too injured to be merely sleeping. They were too young for this. He looked at his own team and knew instantly they would all rather this situation was reversed, that it was them lying lifeless in the street and Ed, Al, Winry, Paninya, Rose, Russell, Fletcher, Kain and Sheska looking mournfully at the bodies. Mustang hardly knew what he was doing as he walked towards Edward Elric's body. Always his favorite, even if he would never say. They had been a lot alike. He felt like he was only half aware as he knelt down next to him, and took off his own stars and medals that marked him as a Brigadier General and attached them to the young Lieutenant Colonel's uniform. He stared at his handiwork. It was all so wrong. But even if he had failed, Ed, he could try to honor him, even though he knew it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.


End file.
